Personal care products have traditionally been marketed in a variety of forms such as bar soaps, creams, lotions, and gels. These personal care products have attempted to satisfy a number of criteria to be acceptable to consumers. These criteria include cleansing effectiveness, skin feel, mildness to skin, hair and ocular mucosae, and sufficient lather volume. Ideal personal care products should gently cleanse, treat or condition the skin or hair, cause little or no irritation, and not leave the skin or hair overly dry after frequent use. Personal care products are frequently used with, or marketed in the form of articles employing a fibrous, non-woven web or other implement (e.g., washcloth, loofah, scrubbing towel, reticulated mesh, etc.) that carries a cleansing formulation or is used to deliver a separate cleansing, treatment or conditioning formulation to the skin or hair.
Traditional forms of personal care cleansing products and articles may be very useful for providing efficacious cleansing and lathering. Such conventional products and articles, however do not simultaneously deliver other desirable agents that provide skin or hair benefit. One solution to this problem is to use separate cleansing and treatment products or articles. However, this is not always convenient or practical, and many consumers would prefer to use a single article that can both cleanse and treat the skin or hair. In a typical personal care article product, a treatment agent such as a skin conditioner is difficult to formulate because it is often incompatible with the cleansing surfactants, resulting in an undesirable non-homogenous mixture. To obtain a homogeneous mixture of surfactants with treatment products such as conditioners, formulator adds emulsifiers, thickeners, and gellants to suspend the conditioning ingredients within a surfactant mixture. While the resulting composition is in an aesthetically pleasing, homogenous mixture, the conditioner is not effectively deposited onto skin or hair because the conditioners are emulsified and not efficiently released during cleansing. Also, many treatment agents have the disadvantage of suppressing lather generation. Lather suppression is a problem because many consumers seek cleansing articles that provide a rich, creamy, and generous lather.
Therefore, it is seen that conventional personal care products and articles that attempt to combine surfactants and other skin and hair treatment agents suffer from disadvantages inherently resulting from the incompatibilities of surfactants and such treatment agents. A need clearly exists to develop personal care systems which provide effective cleansing, effective lathering and yet can also consistently provide sufficient and hair and skin treatment in a single article. Additionally, a need exists for personal care articles that provide unit dosing, exfoliation, and softness that may be handled in such a manner to avoid cluttering one's personal washing area.
The personal care articles of the present invention are convenient to use because they are in the form of either a single, disposable personal care article or multiple disposable articles useful for cleansing as well as application of a therapeutic or aesthetic benefit agent. Disposable articles are convenient because they obviate the need to carry cumbersome bottles, bars, jars, tubes, and other forms of cleansing, treatment and conditioning articles. Disposable articles are also a more sanitary alternative to the use of a sponge, washcloth, or other cleansing implement intended for multiple reuse, because such implements develop bacterial growth, unpleasant odors, and other undesirable characteristics related to repeated use. Fibrous webs are well known in the art. For example, fibrous, non-woven webs such as webs formed from polymer fibers are well known as materials useful for disposable products such as facing layers on absorbent articles such as diapers, for example. In preferred embodiments of the present invention, the articles are suitable for personal care applications and are useful for cleansing and/or therapeutically treating the skin, hair, and similar keratin-containing surfaces in need of such treatment.
In many applications it is desirable that fibrous webs have a bulky texture and/or softness. For example, textile wovens known as terry cloth have a bulky texture and softness and are often used for bath towels, wiping cloths, bibs, clothing, and upholstery fabric. Terry cloth is woven on specially made weaving machines, such as rapier weaving machines. Terry cloth is characterized by tufted loops of thread, and the tufts can be varied in number and density of loops. However, terry cloth is relatively expensive due to the relatively complex and expensive weaving machines necessary for its manufacture. The expense of terry cloth makes it commercially unfeasible for many applications, particularly for articles intended for limited use, such as disposable absorbent articles.
Attempts have been made to produce a fibrous, non-woven web fabric having the appearance of terry cloth. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,465,726 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,379,799, both to Holmes et al., describe an apertured, ribbed terry cloth-like fibrous, non-woven web fabric produced by fluid entangling of fibers on a special forming belt. Even if apertures could be avoided in the method disclosed in Holmes et al., it is well known that fluid entangling is a relatively expensive process for manufacture of fibrous, non-woven web, particularly for webs intended for disposable article use. Furthermore, webs formed by fluid entangling typically have been subjected to forces of the fluid in all the regions of the web so that the entire web is subjected to the applied mechanical energy of the fluid forces.